The BDC spends almost 1/3 of its materials budget allocation to provide this resource for our library customers to use inside our library buildings on our equipment. (Unfortunately, we cannot provide WIFI or off-site access to Ancestry.com products. Their rules, not ours.)

ALE is the 2nd most accessed database the Beaufort County Library provides to our customers. To put this in perspective: the "hits" from DISCUS, EBSCO, and Reference USA come from inside and outside our buildings - and still ALE holds the 2nd spot. Given that you can't get it outside our buildings and only from our specific IP addressed computers, that's quite some statistic!

Grace Cordial has been responsible for the day-to-day operation of the Beaufort District Collection at the Beaufort County Library since 1999. The Beaufort District Collection exists to acquire, preserve, maintain and make accessible a research collection of permanent value which records the history, culture, and environment of our part of the South Carolina lowcountry. Besides the research room, Cordial manages the “Virtual BDC:” the BDC web pages, the Online Obituary Index, two digital collections, a new BDC.BCL Facebook page, and the Connections blog.

Among her duties is to coordinate or present programs about local history, Gullah culture, and our coastal environment, including occasional instructional sessions about how to perform historical and/or genealogical research.